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About brochures factsheets and guides

One of the OHRC’s key roles is to educate individuals and organizations across Ontario about human rights obligations and policies. But we also try to provide the tools to help put those policies into practice.

Brochures and fact sheets are short handouts that include selected parts of policies and larger reports that may be of interest to a specific audience.

These products may also be produced to offer more information on areas like how a policy was created, what steps the OHRC took before making recommendations, what steps were taken in a certain consultation, etc.

2011 - International law says that people in Canada should be able to get good housing that they can afford. To help achieve this in Ontario, tenants and landlords (or housing providers) have rights and responsibilities under the Human Rights Code. As a tenant, you have the right to equal treatment in housing without discrimination and harassment.

This guide aims to encourage and support police services across Ontario in their work as it relates to upholding the Ontario Human Rights Code. The development of this guide is built on the experience gained in a three-year collaborative human rights organizational change project between the Ontario Human Rights Commission (the OHRC), the Toronto Police Service (TPS) and the Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB). The principled human rights approach elaborated in the guide can help police services better serve the needs of Ontario’s increasingly diverse communities, and draw on the strengths of police services’ own internal diversity.

Finding the right consultant to help you develop human rights policies, get training or investigate or resolve disputes is a good investment. A good consultant can help you build a diverse and inclusive workplace, avoid legal expenses and reach diverse markets with your products or services. This fact sheet can help you use search tools on the Internet to find and choose the right consultant for your immediate need. There is no one “best” way to conduct on-line searching. The points offered here are just suggestions.

Landlords and tenants want to comply with housing-related laws, but they don’t always know all the rules. Both landlord and tenant groups want to increase awareness about human rights in housing and to end discrimination. The Ontario Human Rights Commission created this guide to help landlords who are advertising their rental units and organizations that provide housing listings to prevent human rights violations and avoid complaints.

2011 - Sexual and gender-based harassment are kinds of discrimination. They can hurt a person’s dignity, make them feel unsafe and stop them from reaching their full potential. Sexually harassing or bullying someone because of their sex, gender or sexual orientation is not acceptable. It is against the law.

As a student, you have the right to an education where you are not sexually harassed. This includes primary, secondary and post-secondary education, and school activities such as sports, arts and cultural activities, field trips and tutoring.

The Ontario Human Rights Code says everyone has the right to be free from sexual harassment by their landlord, someone working for their landlord, or someone who lives in the same building. Because landlords are in a position of authority, and have access to apartments and often hold personal information, tenants can feel very threatened when they are sexually harassed. This may be especially true for low-income, racialized, gay and lesbian people, people with disabilities and other people identified by the Code who are sometimes targeted for sexual harassment.

In the Ontario Human Rights Code (the Code), sexual harassment is “engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct that is known or ought to be known to be unwelcome.” In some cases, one incident could be serious enough to be sexual harassment. Gender-based harassment is one type of sexual harassment.

The Code says every person has the right to be free from unwelcome advances or solicitation in employment. “Employment” includes applying and interviewing for a job, volunteer work, internships, etc. It also includes activities or events that happen outside of normal business hours or off business premises, but are linked to the workplace and employment.